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Sumit SinghalSumit Singhal loves modern architecture. He comes from a family of builders who have built more than 20 projects in the last ten years near Delhi in India. He has recently started writing about the architectural projects that catch his imagination.

This housing development is about scale : scale of the town, scale of individual flats and the intermediary scale of public spaces around them.

Our work was therefore primarily based on the concept of urban transition between individual social housing, to the South of the development, and more compact apartment blocks over 6 floors to the North, in the « avenue de la Liberation » area.

Alternating solids and spaces, and dividing the building into blocks result in a human scale estate for both tenants and passers by.

Each block can easily be identified as a single structure, yet all blocks are linked together forming a varied and coordinated patchwork.

Repeating a sequence of structures prevents the overwhelming effect a single linear block would have. It also favours real interaction between the estate and the community. This is further reinforced by architectural choice which reflects accepted urban culture: in our collective psyche, as in this housing development, the archetypal house looks like a house from the Monopoly game and a block of flat is cube shaped.

Diversity and fragmentation would have been rhetoric had they merely stopped at the division of the building into individual blocks. To make sense, we had to keep the same architectural language all the way through.

Having separate yet interlinked blocks allows for several outdoor communal areas. These are designed to be used in many different ways.

The landscaping work reflects lower Floirac’s scheme for urban renewal.

The landscaping in the parking area and to the northern side of the development maintains links with existing housing estates, via pedestrian and cycle routes and pathways, thus fully integrating the housing development into the neighbourghood.

The multi layered design of the blocks, allows each flat to enjoy four different aspects, therefore ensuring optimum sunlight during the day in different rooms.

All living rooms, in particular, are located to take best advantage of the sun : they all benefit from either two or three aspects. On the outside, at the end of each pathway, there is a white mesh screen before each private terrace. Nestling between blocks, terraces are staggered to allow double height and light on each floor. Outdoor amenity space for each flat is therefore totally private and tenants are free to customise the area as they wish.